OK(H) the college windmill to remove 'hiss' from the local historic committee

Written by Paul Gauvin

February 12, 2010

For the moment, call it the Barnstable Old King’s Highway (OKH) Hiss-toric District Committee.

If the hype is correct, it’s the largest historic district in the nation, taking in the territory north of Route 6 from Sandwich to Orleans, a road once trod and writ by mid-19th century author-du-jour Henry David Thoreau, he of Walden Pond homesteading and a philosophy of “Civil Disobedience.”

As an historic entity, the committee doesn’t have much of its own past to herald since it was formed only 37 years ago, in 1973, and is probably trying to figure out which segment of olden times it is supposed to be preserving.

Are we talking of whitey’s Cape Cod Bay invasion, the bun-freezing out-house epoch or the early and comfy in-house era? Obviously, what the committee is charged with protecting is relatively contemporary, since it allows all the advanced amenities such as indoor plumbing, windows that actually work, roof gutters that truly protect from the rain and snow, blacktopped roads that afford a smooth ride in a rubber-wheeled car; electric poles, computers, gasoline stations, microwaves, modern paint (though the colors are controlled), delightful fences to restrain pesky travelers and trespassers like Thoreau. These things are allowed, but not an educational and money-saving tool for that other sprawling trespasser called Cape Cod Community College, which should have remained and proliferated in downtown Hyannis, where progress is an active pursuit, save for the wind farm off its shores.

OKH allows small business, but keeps the art-ugly big-box boys at bay. Yet what big box is bigger than Cape Cod Community College with roughly ten buildings on 116 acres? How was that shoehorned into a historic district in the first place?

Unfortunately, the West Barnstable Village campus was built, then occupied in 1970, three years prior to the birth of the OKH, which barely missed being able to put the kibosh on locating the college itself in that historic district, let alone a windmill.

When conservatives talk about “too much government” as the current tea party movement does (more like a passing nervous tic than a movement), historic districts stand out as a classic example. To freedom-loving residents, the OKH is like having to raise your hand in the classroom to go to the bathroom.

This brings us to the recent OKH rejection of Cape Cod College’s application to construct a windmill on its property, which, unfortunately, is in the historic district rather than Independence Park or downtown Hyannis where the college in 1961 was born and bred in the current Town Hall.

The OKH mandate notwithstanding,Thoreau reminds that “…earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly…not a fossil earth, but a living earth.”

One interprets “a living earth” as a work in progress, an evolutionary continuum that has given rise to words such as “redevelopment,” a strategy that builds new upon old as a matter of practicality that paces itself with developing science and societal need.

From this corner, it was a cheerless and unfortunate decision by the local OKH committee to deny the college a windmill. One hopes it will be overturned by the full district to allow the college to proceed on its property for beneficent educational and budgetary purposes. The turbine would give hands-on experience to students taking “green” courses and save the institution close to $170K annually in electricity costs.

Windmills, after all, are part and parcel of Cape Cod’s history and development. Grist mills with their wood and canvas blades appeared on-Cape around the mid-1700s, floated over the bay from Plymouth, and were still around when Thoreau made his 1849 trip along the Capescape. Historically speaking, then, the presence of windmills preserves Cape history. The only difference is that instead of grinding corn, the modern version grinds out electricity.

If the size and architectural modernity of sleek, stark, contemporary turbines is the bother, the OKH should try to visualize one that fits its historic directive by evoking the early days of the village. Perhaps a huge totem pole, the largest in the nation in keeping with the largest historic district, with blades made to resemble the wings of eagles, the national bird, and the likenesses of the district committee, town manager and town council carved into it for posterity. Think that would look any better?

Surely in this case, aesthetics should take a back seat to our drive for cheaper electricity and a cleaner environment – like the one that greeted the Cape’s early settlers. That’s certainly worth preserving.